


Building Blocks

by Rainyscribbs



Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe, Found Family, Gen, Parent-Child Relationship, hinted magnugaard, ivor is done with everything, lots and lots of adoption, these kids need hugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:40:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26158198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainyscribbs/pseuds/Rainyscribbs
Summary: Any member of the Order of the Stone who was asked would say the same thing: it all started when a certain nervous but nonetheless adoring little girl found her way into the workshop of Ellegaard the Redstone Engineer.
Relationships: Ellegaard & Olivia, Ellegaard/Magnus (hinted), Gabriel & Petra, Magnus & Axel, Soren & Lukas
Kudos: 30





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many of the ideas for this story came from the awesome grovyrosegirl, who can be found on Tumblr and fanfiction dot net under that username (thank you!). I know there's plenty of brilliant stories out there already with this premise, so consider this my take on it, I suppose.

Ellegaard had always guarded her workshop with the utmost vigilance, not to mention defensive mechanisms complex enough to deter even the most determined, insufferable, frustrating (and also unbearably, horrendously _perfect_ ) masked rogue. It was her sanctuary, her refuge from the aggravations of day-to-day life. Her place to lose herself in what she knew, what she loved, for hours at a time.

So it was more than a tad disconcerting to trudge into her workshop one tired evening, after noticing vaguely that it seemed rather easier to open than usual, to come across a curly-haired child standing in the middle of the room, dark eyes wide and utterly awestruck as she trailed a hand across the blueprint-littered, redstone-smudged desk.

Ellegaard's eyebrows shot up, shoulders dropping briefly before tensing up again. Of course, she was rather well-known for her engineering expertise, but nobody had ever even _dared_ to come within five feet of this room before (Magnus being the obvious exception) and if they _had_ entertained such an audacious idea, the defences should have been more than enough to both keep them out and alert Ellegaard to the fact that someone was trying to break into her precious laboratory.

So _what_ , exactly, did this little girl think she was doing? And more to the point, _how in the name of Heaven_ did she get in without triggering any of the traps or alarms?

Ellegaard kept her eyes on the child, debating how best to approach this. Although Ellie's steps had been somewhat heavier than usual due to fatigue, it appeared that the kid hadn't noticed her entrance, much too preoccupied with the various components, tools and half-finished pieces of machinery that surrounded them.

That being the case, Ellegaard decided to announce her presence first and foremost. At the sound of her clearing her throat, the kid spun around so quickly that if Ellegaard had blinked, she would've missed the movement. Her eyes, impossibly, widened further, jaw dropping and face aflame. In fact, had Ellie not been silently seething (and also somewhat bewildered, though she'd be damned if she showed it), she would have found the image comical. It was the very definition of being caught red-handed – _literally_ , Ellegaard thought wryly, eyes lingering on the smudges her desk had left on the girl's hand.

The silence stretched on for several long moments until Ellegaard raised an impatient eyebrow. "Care to explain to me just what _you're_ doing in _my_ laboratory?" she asked, not bothering to keep the acidity out of her tone.

The girl flinched violently, gaze dropping to stare at her cracked shoes, cheeks the same colour as the burning torches lining the walls. Her lips moved, but whatever she said was much too quiet and too stammery for Ellegaard to catch.

"Speak up."

She winced again, her chin against her chest. "I just…wanted to see."

Ellegaard gave a long, low half-sigh, half-growl, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Do I really need to point this out to you? You're _trespassing_. You have _no right_ to be in here, it's _dangerous_ , I'll be _damned_ if I have any idea how you got past all the defences–"

"I disabled them."

The woman stopped mid-rant, stepping back as if the girl had physically pushed her. Silence reigned, during which the little girl hesitantly raised her gaze to Ellegaard's face before quickly dropping it again.

"Excuse me?"

"I…I disabled your defences," the child mumbled, wrapping her arms around herself.

" _You?_ " Ellegaard asked stupidly, running her hands through her hair.

The girl nodded slightly. Still avoiding eye contact.

Ellie lifted her chin a little, then tilted her head, a cynical half-smile settling onto her face. "And how did you do that, may I ask?"

The girl blinked several times, loosening her arms slightly. "I…well…" And, not without some hesitation, she launched into her explanation, going into great detail about the inner workings of each trap and her own thought processes while working out how to deactivate them. Ellegaard stood impassive, head still cocked to the side and arms tightly folded, but she couldn't help noticing that the child seemed to grow more confident with each sentence until she was almost talking too fast for Ellegaard to keep up with, eyes bright and speech punctuated with hand gestures. A mild curiosity tugged at the edges of Ellegaard's (frankly rather brilliant) mind as she listened with grudging, though mounting, interest.

"-and then I just opened the door and…walked…in," the girl finished, mumbling the last part, her self-assurance apparently slipping as she remembered she was still trespassing. The eager light in her dark eyes had vanished as the anxiety returned to them.

The irritation that had been brewing in Ellegaard's chest almost seemed to drain away somewhat, replaced by something she couldn't quite put her finger on. If this girl was telling the truth (and Ellie had to admit that all of the signs so far pointed to that), then she…well, she was clever. Remarkably clever. Or a very good liar. After a long, long, _long_ pause, she slowly unfolded her arms, moving forward. The kid automatically took an unsteady step back as though afraid the engineer was going to strike her.

"What's your name?"

"Olivia," the child muttered after a second or two, evidently forcing herself to maintain eye contact this time.

"Well, _Olivia_ …" Ellegaard narrowed her eyes. "Are you sure – and I mean completely, 100% _certain_ – that you're telling the truth? Nobody helped you to get in here?" A new suspicion materialised in her head. "A certain…green man…didn't enlist you to break in for a prank, perhaps?"

Olivia shook her head hard, brow creased in confusion, but she continued staring up at Ellegaard like a child meeting their favourite superhero – which, Ellegaard reminded herself, probably wasn't at all far from the truth. That new feeling she couldn't name intensified.

"Where are your parents, Olivia?" asked Ellegaard, her tone a little softer than it was before but still firm and stern. "If they're not with you, then they probably need to know that you're here."

Those dark eyes suddenly widened, saddened, directed themselves to the wall rather than Ellie's face. Olivia opened her mouth, then closed it again, hands twisting each other. Ellegaard frowned, brow furrowing, before her own eyes went wide, an unpleasantly cold feeling making itself at home in her heart.

_Oh._

She hadn't considered…she hadn't thought that…

She just hadn't _thought_.

Ellie's hand came up to rub the nape of her neck, the woman herself painfully aware that she was somewhat out of her depth here. She could hardly just send Olivia out and leave her by herself, she knew that much. She was a _child_ , for goodness's sakes. So what should Ellegaard do? What could she do?

"You know," Ellegaard found herself saying, tone uncharacteristically gentle, "if you really did manage to get in here by yourself…that's quite impressive, Olivia. You ought to be proud of your knowledge. Not many people could have done that without help, especially children."

Olivia's gaze flicked back over to Ellie, her jaw falling almost as low as it had when she'd been discovered. She muttered something Ellie didn't catch, a pink flush creeping up her neck and face. Ellegaard tried to suppress a smile, getting the distinct feeling that she hadn't quite managed it.

"Do you have a home at all?" she continued, an unanticipated idea forming in that brilliant brain of hers.

Pause. Shrug. Avoiding eye contact again.

"Well, in that case…" Ellegaard paused as well, thinking intently about how best to phrase this. "I…can't say I'd particularly mind if you wanted to…stay for a bit." She pressed her lips together tightly, finally doing what Soren had always advised her to do and swallowing her pride before reluctantly, though no less honestly, adding, "Some help probably wouldn't go amiss."

The sorrow that had just looked so painfully _wrong_ on the face of a kid faded as Olivia stared at Ellie with the purest wonder and disbelief the engineer had seen in her life. "Really?" she croaked after several seconds, as though she didn't dare to believe it, as though she was afraid Ellegaard had played some horrible joke on her.

Ellegaard merely shrugged, offering Olivia a real smile this time. "Well, I don't see why not. You obviously know what you're doing, but I could teach you _much_ more. And since you're already here…"

Olivia winced slightly at the reminder of her intrusion.

"…get yourself some gloves." Ellegaard nodded towards a chest that sat in the corner, pulling her own gloves out of her inventory as she made her way over to one of the workbenches, tiredness forgotten in the anticipation of creation. "Now tell me, how familiar are you with advanced sorting systems?"

She didn't have to look at Olivia to know that the girl was smiling brightly for the first time.

And neither of them questioned it when, still deep in lively conversation as they walked down the hall, Ellegaard automatically showed Olivia to one of the temple's cosy spare rooms later that night.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the chapter that gave me the most trouble and I think it shows T^T

If he was being totally honest, Magnus had _no_ frickin' idea what to make of the curly-haired little shrimp of a girl that Ellie had taken to dragging about with her.

It looked like she felt the same way about him and the others, to be fair. The kid followed Ellie around the place like a sheeple and yabbered on to her about... _stuff_ (which, as Ellie liked to remind him, he was 'just too dense to understand', as if crap like that had ever bothered him) at the dinner table, but she could barely make eye contact with Magnus, let alone string more than a few words together whenever he saw fit to try and talk to her.

It only made sense that his presence had that kind of effect on her, he figured. He practically radiated awesomeness, after all.

Until, of course, Magnus got a _little_ too careless when he and Ellie were butting heads for what had to be the third time that day. 'Had to be' being the main words there. It wasn't like Magnus actually counted. Not like it mattered to him or, God forbid, like he _enjoyed_ seeing the proof that the Nerd Queen had some fire in her or anything.

There the two of them were, scoring points off each other left, right and centre, and of course Magnus was too busy appreciating the way Ellie's cheeks were flushing to notice that 'Olivia' kid hovering nearby, trying to block out the sound of their bickering by occupying herself with the...redstone-ish thingy she was holding. Hell if Magnus knew what set the shrimp off, but she suddenly got right in his face, doing a pretty good job of cutting him off in the middle of something involving a curse word or two.

"Don't talk to her like that!" Olivia snapped, eyes hard as she looked him full in the face for once.

Magnus blinked, mind hitting the brakes. Part of him wanted to make some comeback sour enough to strip the paint off the walls. The other part kind of wanted to get up and slap the kid on the back for finally growing a spine. Even if it was _now_ , of all times.

The sight of Ellie's surprised face settling into a proud smirk over the girl's shoulder slammed Magnus's brain back into gear.

"It speaks," he drawled at last, rolling a cigarette and striking up without looking at what he was doing. His eyes flickered from Olivia to Ellie.

The kid's flinty glare wobbled a little at his words as she bit her lip hard. Ellie's smug smile fell.

"You don't need to trouble yourself with _him_ , Olivia. Come on." Ellie reached out, all nicey-nicey as she led her- _the_ kid away but making sure to look back at Magnus and treat him to her nastiest scowl.

Magnus leaned back in his chair with his hands folded behind his head, lit cigarette still held between his fingers, and gave a snort.

_We-e-e-ell, looks like Ellie's found herself a live one. Knew there was a reason she keeps that kid around._

All they ever did was hang around like a pair of geeky spiders in that 'lab' of Ellie's anyway, playing about with God-only-knew-what, rubbing it in everyone else's faces that the two of them knew stuff that they didn't and acting like they were just _soooo_ smart and important, as though they were on the brink of some huge world-shattering discovery 24/7. They called it progress.

Magnus called it pointless. And a waste of Ellie's time and attention when both of those things could be better spent elsewhere.

_Maybe_ , prodded an annoying kind of 'inner voice' that sounded suspiciously like Soren's, _if you found something new to do with yourself, you wouldn't mind so much that Ellegaard is busier lately because of Olivia._

"Shaddap," he grumbled to nobody in particular, groaning as he pushed himself to his feet. Damn, he was getting old.

(He could almost hear the light, mocking _"getting?"_ Ellie would retort with if he ever said that out loud.)

He snorted again and took a deep drag of his cigarette, heading for the door. Maybe if he got some air, it'd stop Ivor from nagging him when the guy eventually showed his face after whatever 'expedition' he'd set off on this time. Who knew, the extra sunlight might end up giving Ivor a long-overdue cheerfulness boost.

Heh. Magnus was a fine one to talk, wasn't he?

He wandered out into the biome, not really aiming for anywhere, just going wherever his feet chose to take him until he found himself in a tiny clearing, cigarette smoke swirling up through the air. If he chose to ignore the nagging feeling that he'd be getting a few lectures about smoking in the forest later on, then the sight was kind of weirdly mesmerising. That is, until a loud rustling noise snapped him out of whatever trance-y state he was in.

Magnus turned his head so fast, he had to rub at his cricked neck with a grimace. Wait...what the Hell was that sticking out from behind that tree? Griefers had always liked to challenge him to battles and tournaments and dares and whatnot, but none of them would be dumb enough to try and ambush him.

Would they?

But that was definitely half of a (annoyingly tall) person, jutting out as plain as day. The half shifted a little, one dark eye peeking at him, whoever-it-was obviously thinking that the tree trunk was somehow enough to hide them from Magnus's view. Well, he was gonna burst _that_ bubble right away.

"Ya don't know _nothin'_ about bein' a griefer, do you?" he grumped, crushing his cigarette underneath his heel in what he liked to think was his most intimidating way.

The person jumped about a foot in the air, stumbling backwards from the tree a little. Now Magnus could see them properly. It was a boy, staring at him from under a mess of black hair. He had one of those round, smooth faces that looked like it couldn't grow a beard even if you fertilised it, a kid face, but he loomed over Magnus like some kind of frickin' tower. Which just bent Magnus out of shape even more. He had to admit, the guy looked too young to be a griefer. Even griefers had enough responsibility not to let little kids join them...mostly. But it had been a while. Maybe that'd changed since Magnus last checked.

That was the way a lot of stuff went, after all.

The boy's mouth moved silently for a second before he found his voice. " _I'm_ not a griefer. Aren't _you_ a griefer?"

Magnus's lip curled. "Then what're you doing lurking behind that tree, huh? Sure as Hell doesn't look like it's for the fun of it." he pointed out, deciding not to answer the boy's question.

(Yet.)

"I saw you and I thought you were a griefer." the kid explained (even though it wasn't really any kind of explanation at all by normal standards), tapping his fingers together nervously. He leaned closer and added, in a sort of stage whisper, "Griefers are awesome."

For the second time in less than an hour, Magnus blinked blankly, knocked for six by something that had come out of a kid's mouth. "Ya think?"

Man, why did he suddenly sound so unsure of himself? That was _not_ like him.

The kid, on the other hand, nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah. They run around wearing those really cool masks, like yours, and they hold lit TNT in their hands and then they throw it like-" He made a whistling sound that ended with a noise similar to the average explosion, talking with his hands in a way that would've caused a taller person than Magnus to get smacked in the face. "But I've never seen one. You know, in real life. And I thought you were one, 'cause of your mask and stuff. And 'cause you look like you're awesome too."

Magnus puffed out his chest at those last words, looking at the boy with a new approval. Kid knew coolness when he saw it.

(He ignored the warm feeling that came with noticing that the kid really seemed to actually _mean_ it and wasn't just trying to suck up to him for whatever reason.)

"I gotta say, you have good taste...uh, whatever your name is."

The boy offered a big ol' goofy smile as his hands relaxed and fell back to his sides. "Axel and, ah, how do you do?"

The rogue nodded in return. "Some call me the king of awesome, some call me a bit of a griefer myself..."

Axel's black eyes lit up, giving Magnus a crazy urge to chuckle.

"But _you_ , kid..." He smiled slowly, remembering in the back of his mind ( _yeah, Ellie, I have got one..._ ) how long it'd been since he'd given anyone a proper smile. "I guess _you_ can just call me Magnus."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who I blame for my love of MCSM characters becoming adoptive parents (I'm lookin' at you, Toni) ;-;  
> Also, this chapter involves Cute Sleepy Lukas, so enjoy.

Soren honestly felt as though he practically had children coming out of his ears.

First, there had been Olivia, whom Soren had no idea existed until he dragged himself away from his books and blueprints to eat at the table for once, only to find a little girl with curly pigtails sandwiched between Ellegaard and Magnus - the latter of whom was shooting the girl the occasional look, as though sizing her up. Gabriel was sharpening his sword nonchalantly in the corner, his expression _screaming_ 'just another day in paradise'. Fortunately for Soren, Ellegaard emerged from her spiel on solar power long enough to take pity on his poorly-disguised confusion and explain to him that she'd found Olivia poking around in her lab several days ago and honestly, she wasn't all that surprised he hadn't noticed their new houseguest sooner. Soren had nodded as though he understood then barricaded himself in his library for a few hours after the meal. At least the plot twists that his books threw his way usually had some forewarning and sense behind them. But Olivia turned out to be an intelligent, helpful child whose presence meant that Ellegaard could get more done in a shorter space of time and therefore had more time to relax somewhat, and so Soren supposed he didn't mind accepting this particular twist.

Then, not long afterwards, Magnus had darted past him with what appeared to be another, bigger green blur behind him. The rogue, obviously noting Soren's stare on his way past, gabbled something about the blur's name being Axel before the two of them were disappearing through a door, leaving Soren standing with his mouth open in an aborted series of questions.

A part of Soren could not quite smother the distinct impression that one of Magnus's reasons for taking the boy in may have been a petty retaliation of sorts towards Ellie for spending more time mentoring Olivia than paying attention to his antics. Still, Magnus had done quite a few rather more frustrating things before and he seemed to genuinely enjoy having Axel around. Soren just hoped (illogically) that he had enough responsibility not to put the child he appeared to have adopted in danger through his more...reckless stunts.

(Really, though, had it been strictly necessary on Ellegaard's part to roll her eyes the first time he voiced that hope?)

And now? Now there was a different child altogether for Soren to ponder over.

He was no stranger to the library in the next biome over; his own private one always needed more volumes to fill its shelves ( _"'Too many' is never enough, Magnus." "That makes no sense, Soren..."_ ), after all. And neither, it seemed, was the strange blond boy who sometimes sat in a corner or at one of the little tables while absorbed in a book of some kind (rarely the same one two days in a row), sometimes wandered amongst the shelves running his fingers along the spines of the neatly lined-up books, but was always present and always by himself. And always seemed to arrive before Soren walked in and was still there when the architect left, even on the occasions where it was well after dark and almost closing time.

Even though Soren was often too preoccupied with the fascinating worlds, the tales that promised treasure and glory, that the books offered him to give the matter a great deal of thought, wasn't he just a little bit curious as to why a boy that age spent his days in a library, of all places (not that libraries weren't perfectly respectable, enjoyable places to go, of course, but from Soren's own childhood experiences, many youngsters tended not to see it that way)?

Indeed he was.

But whenever that curiosity surfaced, Soren forced himself to remember that very few people appreciated someone who pried and settled down to whatever tomes had caught his interest this time, although he did glance at the child out of the corner of his eye from time to time. And that's the way the matter likely would have stayed had Soren not arrived at the library around daybreak one Thursday morning.

He'd shot up from his... _bed_ (he internally winced at the fleeting vision of Ivor's expression if he ever found out that Soren had dropped off to sleep at his desk again) at the crack of dawn, roused by a suspicious noise that, typically enough, sounded as though it had come from the 'Magnus Chamber', as the rogue called it. Soren was on the point of storming into said room and delivering a lecture or two on the need that lesser humans than Magnus had for uninterrupted sleep when a clamour of voices rose from the hallway that linked the Magnus Chamber and Ellegaard's lab. Magnus's (admittedly rather impressive, if only for its breadth and creativity) array of expletives, Ellie's threats to cut off various parts of Magnus's anatomy, booming laughter than could only belong to Axel and, before long, Olivia's sleepy voice asking what was going on, evidently having been roused in a similar manner to Soren and gone to find the source of the disturbance.

Soren rose to his feet, tugging at his hair in frustration. To stay and listen to the bickering would be foolish; to try and intervene would be pointless at best and suicide at worst. That being the case, he decided that a little trip to somewhere with rows of nice quiet _books_ was in order.

As he passed the open door of the kitchen, he had to physically restrain himself from facepalming at the sight of a bleary-eyed Gabriel taking a shot.

*

It was as Soren was sliding a book entitled _March of the Endermen_ off one of the shelves when he heard a soft snore.

The book fell from its high perch, slipping through his fingers and landing squarely onto his right foot. He paused only to pick it back up (he may or may not have also muttered something that would have both made a sailor blush and earned him an approving slap on the back from one Magnus the Rogue) before squinting into thin air, trying to determine the source of the sound.

The sun was still coming up, after all; Soren himself and the mouth-breathing librarian were the only two who'd conceivably be in a library at such an hour. Weren't they?

Or so Soren thought, until he found Blond Boy slumped over a table with his hair falling over his face, which was pillowed in the inner spine of the book open in front of him.

Soren's eyebrows lifted. Surely the child hadn't been there all night? But the quiet snores drifting out of his slightly open mouth confirmed that he was quite deeply asleep and had been for some time, even though the library had only opened for the day ten or fifteen minutes ago.

A frown creasing his forehead, Soren shook his head in concern before going to fetch a blanket from the so-called children's corner (making sure to glare at the oblivious librarian on his way past the front desk).

As the architect draped the coverlet over the boy, the latter shifted the tiniest bit, murmuring something indistinct, then settled again, eyes staying closed. Sleeping hunched over like that didn't look terribly comfortable or healthy, but Soren thought better of trying to move him. Instead, he decided to seat himself on a chair with unnecessarily thin padding, earning himself a ferocious-but-deliberately-ignored glare from the librarian as he dragged it a few inches across the floor so that he was situated directly across from the kid, as though the sight had awakened a protective instinct within him that was usually reserved for when he believed his fellow Order members, his family of choice, were under some kind of threat. He suspected that perhaps it was because something about the picture was simultaneously slightly pathetic, oddly moving and (Soren allowed himself a smile) reminded him of himself in his younger days.

Oh, who was he trying to fool? It reminded him of himself as he still was.

With that thought, Soren focused his attention onto his Enderman book, only half-listening to the muted snores in the background. In fact, a while later, he didn't even register that they'd stopped until he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye.

The architect gave a start as blue eyes fluttered open, their owner pushing himself into a sitting position before squinting at Soren.

Well...in Soren's general direction, anyhow.

Soren's mouth twitched under his beard, but he continued watching the boy with something like wariness, which the child returned. His rumpled blond hair and the fuzzy blanket now hanging crookedly off his shoulders made the slightly suspicious look more endearing than disconcerting, however.

Their impromptu mutual staring contest was broken by Soren semi-awkwardly clearing his throat. Just as he was about to lower his eyes back onto his book, however, the child seemed to really notice the blanket for the first time. His still-heavy eyes focused their gaze onto it for a few seconds, then darted said gaze to Soren's face, apparently putting two and two together. He said nothing.

The man focused on the page open in front of him and was just getting back into 'the zone' (as he'd heard it called) when there was a soft mutter of "Thanks" from across the table.

Soren paused briefly, glancing up at the boy before going back to his reading, not without the slightest of smiles. "You're welcome."

*

On the whole, nothing had changed. Soren still went to the library as regularly as he had before the encounter and the boy could still be found there. However, when Soren happened to make eye contact with him, he would now give a nod or small wave of acknowledgement, which the boy would answer with a nod or wave of his own. The faint, nagging curiosity still persisted, though. And from the way the child would sometimes glance the architect's way through narrowed eyes, Soren wondered once or twice whether the feeling was mutual.

He wondered several things about that boy, if he was honest (he pushed down the unpleasant pangs of conscience he feared he and his friends would soon come to associate with that particular word).

So one cloudy day, Soren set his pile of books down onto the table where the boy was sitting, by himself yet again. The boy didn't really seem to register his presence at first, deeply engrossed with the book (this one somewhat smaller than you would expect, though Soren didn't dwell on this detail) his head was bent over.

Soren took a chair at the table, silently cursing the fact that it hadn't gotten any comfier since he'd last sat there and watched over, almost guarded the child as he slept and said, without any preamble (he did so hate preliminary small talk), "You come here rather a lot, don't you?"

The boy blinked at him, glancing back over his shoulder as though trying to find anyone else to whom Soren could possibly be talking. He gave the man a long, scrutinising look, evidently trying to figure out whether there was any significance behind the question. "I guess you could say that, yeah," he eventually replied, a tad cautiously but offering Soren a tiny smile to indicate that the man's company wasn't altogether unwelcome.

The architect barely lasted a second before continuing, "May I ask why?"

_Ask no questions and you'll be told no lies_ , snarked a mental voice that Soren chose to ignore.

He'd been doing that rather a lot lately.

The child abruptly dropped his gaze, shrugging. The gesture held a sort of feigned nonchalance that caught Soren's attention. "I don't know. I guess I don't really..." He cut himself off with a deep sigh. "I don't have a lot of other places to go," he finished, looking very much like it had cost him a considerable effort to get the words out. He appeared to be staring down at his lap rather than paying attention to Soren's expression, but the architect hoped that the pity stabbing at his chest didn't show on his face anyway. He got the distinct impression that it wouldn't be appreciated.

Unfortunately, this had the regrettable effect of leading into a strained silence. The boy shrugged again, more to himself this time, and continued with his book. The scratching sound of the pen in his hand caused realisation to dawn on Soren.

The boy wasn't _reading_.

He was _writing_.

A vision of his own younger self, bright-eyed and enthusiastic with inkstains lingering under his fingernails, swam in the architect's mind for the briefest of moments.

"What have you got there?" he asked casually, endeavouring to betray none of the strange sudden excitement he felt.

The boy paused in his scrawling. "Oh, I...well, I like stories – always have, really. And sometimes, I just...kind of like to make up my own," he explained haltingly. With a small, nervous laugh, he added, "I know that's not exactly the coolest thing to do, but-"

"Not at all, not at all," Soren corrected him immediately. "Stories are rather magical things. Doubly so when one writes their own."

"Well, I'm not all that sure how good mine are," the child admitted, fiddling with his pen. "I don't write properly. I don't really _plan_ anything; I just kind of...let it write itself, almost." He cast his notebook a somewhat disdainful look, appearing to be cross with himself.

Ah. Soren knew that feeling.

"There's no 'properly' when it comes to something like writing, my boy," Soren assured him, the term slipping from him before he could catch it back. If the kid noticed, he didn't comment. "May I take a look?"

The wide-eyed stare his request was greeted with convinced Soren that he'd gone too far in his prying, but just as he opened his mouth to form an apology, the notebook was slid over to him. The architect hesitated for all of two seconds, then opened it, registering vaguely that the name 'Lukas' was printed on the inside of the front cover. He flipped through page after page of adventure, high fantasy, dystopias, written in a hand that was neat but childish.

Feeling the kid's – Lukas's – eyes upon him, Soren lowered the notebook, reluctantly passing it back to him.

"Nobody's ever...been interested in stuff I do before," the kid told him, with a resignation that caused the architect's shoulders to slump a little.

"Well, that's their loss," Soren found himself declaring bluntly, Lukas looking up at him from under his eyelashes. "You have a great deal of potential, Lukas – that is your name, right?"

Lukas nodded slowly, a genuine smile curving his mouth. Soren was about to add something else when his eyes happened to fall upon the nearby window.

"It's getting late," he noted, glancing around and realising that most of the other library patrons had left.

Lukas's face clouded over again. "Oh...yeah. Well, you should get off home, I guess, and I'll just..." He left the sentence unfinished, bowing his blond head over his notepad again.

Soren would've said goodnight and turned to leave, but something was stopping him. He gave Lukas a scrutinising look not unlike the one the boy had given him earlier. "You said you had nowhere to go, correct?"

"Yeah," the kid replied, a note of defensiveness in his voice. He glanced over at the front desk and lowered his voice. "If I'm quiet, the guy at the desk usually doesn't notice I'm still here when he locks up for the night."

Soren took in a deep breath, something about Lukas's matter-of-fact tone saddening him. "I know another place you could stay. A place with actual _beds_ ," he added, sparing the excuses for chairs a contemptuous look.

Lukas's eyes widened, then narrowed. "What do you mean?"

Soren gingerly placed a hand on his shoulder. "I swear you can trust me," he assured awkwardly, changing the subject. "What got you into writing in the first place?"

At the words, the incredulity in Lukas's face fell away, replaced by an enthusiasm more suited to his young face. "When I was a kid – younger than I am now, I mean – I always used to have these really vivid dreams whenever I heard a good story and then in the morning, I'd write them down before I forgot them. And one day, I just looked at them all and-"

Soren listened attentively to the kid's ramble, hearing more and more of himself with every word. And Lukas innocently talked on through his tiredness, heartened by the promise of somewhere safe and warm to go.


	4. Chapter 4

Everyone in the entire biome, including the Order, knew of the band of travellers that was slowly passing through, as did many people in the neighbouring biomes. The group consisted of everything from hunter-gatherers and fishermen to mercenaries to entertainers, the latter of which regularly sang and played and performed card tricks for whatever iron they could make from the ones who turned up to wherever the travellers were camping that night to watch.

In most circumstances, this wouldn't really be of much importance to Gabriel. It wasn't unheard of, after all. But 'most circumstances' was swiftly shot halfway to the Nether when a dishevelled messenger knocked frantically on the door of the Order's temple, not even pausing to catch his breath before stammering out that the travellers' camp had been attacked by what had appeared to be a pack of savage bandits. And that was how Gabriel, Soren and a few other men who'd gotten wind of the incident had found themselves running to the scene to investigate.

The attack had clearly been brutal. Many of the travellers' roughly constructed huts, most of which were dotted about over a small area quite close to a cave, had been badly burnt; those that hadn't instead had chunks of them hanging off, huge gaps gouged into them or both. So much of the grass in the vicinity had been burnt away that the ground resembled a macabre sort of patchwork quilt and the smell of smoke still lingered in the night air. The silence pressing around the place was almost...well, _deathly_.

Gabriel glanced at Soren, the whole reason that he'd brought the man with him in the first place being that he'd vaguely hoped that some parts of the camp could be salvaged and rebuilt for those who'd evaded capture (or worse). He noticed that the architect looked a little twitchy and he wasn't sure how much of that was down to the devastation in front of them and how much was mother-hen nerves over being away from his kid for the first time.

The three kids had stayed safely at the temple, out of harm's way, and Magnus and Ellegaard had stayed behind too, at the insistence of both Soren and Gabriel (for the first time, the rogue and the engineer had actually been of one mind on something, protesting that they had to come and help too. Gabriel had tried to quell this by pointing on that neither explosions nor redstone could realistically be of much use in a situation like this, but Soren had succeeded by arguing that the kids needed someone to keep an eye on them). One thing that they all agreed on was that their protective instincts spiked at the thought of something happening to those kids while the Order weren't there, after all. Even Gabriel, whom the kids appeared to look up to as a 'cool uncle' figure of sorts, which he found gratifying as well as rather accurate.

Soren suddenly tapped Gabriel's shoulder, the warrior's brown furrowing deeply with dismay as he spotted patches of dull red staining the ground. His hand tightened upon the handle of his trusty blade.

Gabriel turned abruptly to the small group just behind them, all of whom were glancing around askance. "Spread out and see if you can find anything or anyone capable of telling us more," he ordered, not waiting to listen to the murmurs of assent.

He strode deeper into the camp, finding shreds of evidence that many of the travellers had either been dragged off, chased away or (Gabriel's gut contracted) killed, if the red splatters on the ground, on trees, on collapsed walls and on some of the items that had been left behind, such as fishing rods and torn blankets, were anything to go by. But surely some had escaped?

If so, were they still nearby?

Gabriel paused as the nearby cave caught his eye. It had _'bears and wolves'_ written all over it, but it just seemed stupid not to look inside to check whether or not anybody had retreated there. Besides, he was _Gabriel the Warrior_ ; he could handle _wildlife_.

Squaring his shoulders and assuming his battle stance, Gabriel moved into the pitch-black entrance of the cave...only he realise rather quickly that it wasn't as pitch-black as he'd assumed. On the contrary, a lone torch inside was casting a single circle of flickering light onto the craggy stone wall.

Which in turn illuminated the two small, decidedly neither ursine nor lupine faces next to it.

Instinct took over and Gabriel crossed the cave in three long-legged strides. As soon as they noticed him, the taller one shrank away, passing a protective arm around the smaller child sleeping on her shoulder with tearstains marking their grimy cheeks.

"Get away," she choked out, glowering up at him from under a tangle of bright red hair.

The warrior hesitated only briefly before crouching down next to the two of them, glancing first at the tiny sleeping one, who was so bedraggled and raggedy that it was impossible to tell what gender they were, and then at the girl whose tightly drawn eyebrows, bared teeth and clenched fists were all at complete odds with the hollowed look in her eyes.

They _had_ just watched their world being ripped away, after all. The wreckage just outside was proof enough of that. Little wonder the redhead was gripping the child next to her as if she was just about ready to pounce upon anyone who so much as tugged a lock of their hair.

Gabriel leaned away slightly so as not to imply a threat of any kind, hastily sliding his sword back into his inventory when he realised that the girl's distrustful eyes were darting between him and the blade.

"I'm not here to hurt you," he said in a low voice. "We – me and some others – are only here to help however we can."

The girl scowled even more, averting her gaze as her cracked lips tightened.

"We don't need your _help_ ," she spat, her harsh tone causing the other child to stir in their sleep, forehead creasing briefly before their face relaxed again. "All the others did, before. Nobody cared then; why should they now?" The last few words sounded distorted, as though something solid and heavy was caught in her throat. She turned her face away from a deeply frowning Gabriel, instead choosing to press her forehead against the top of the other kid's head. Her voice was little more than a horse whisper when she added, "Don't need _anyone_. Don't _have_ anyone anymore."

Gabriel would have sworn his heart had physically sunk all the way down past his boots. It certainly felt as if someone was stepping all over it.

"The fact that you don't _have_ anyone," he said heavily, cutting through a charged silence, "is exactly why the two of you _need_ someone."

The girl slowly raised her head and blinked at him, suddenly looking so much younger, so much more vulnerable, now that some of the ferocity had melted from her demeanour. Something trembled in her eyes for a few moments, some metaphorical wall just beginning to chip the slightest bit, causing something protective (not unlike his tendencies towards Olivia, Axel and Lukas, except that this, for whatever reason, was stronger) to spark in Gabriel's chest. She opened her mouth as if to say something-

"Gabriel?"

The warrior's head whipped around so quickly, he almost gave himself whiplash. He squinted into the almost tangible darkness around them, barely able to make out a familiar shape standing in the cave entrance. Obviously spotting Gabriel by the torchlight, Soren stepped closer, his eyes falling onto the two kids with an unfathomable expression on his face.

Gabriel glanced at the red-haired girl, sadness and concern striking his chest in equal measure as she huddled back against the wall again, that defensively hostile scowl of a mask wrenched back into place with eyes twice as hard as before, as though to compensate for letting tiny gaps be chipped into those walls. He exchanged a troubled look with Soren.

"I don't know what to do," the kid admitted finally, voice far quieter and more childlike than it had been so far. She didn't look at either of them as she trailed shaky fingers over the other child's unkempt hair as they slept on, little face squished against her arm. "I don't know what we _can_ do."

Gabriel let out a long, low sigh, cautiously edging closer and then slowly leaning into the girl's sightline until she was forced to look him in the eyes. "You're both coming with us, that's what you're going to do." he told her, gently but firmly.

"We can look after oursel-"

He cut off her weak protest. "No, you can't. At least...not under these circumstances," he added, making sure to hold her gaze.

More silence succeeded until the girl finally gave the tiniest of nods, too weary to argue anymore, judging by the way the look of distrust was replaced by a physical and emotional exhaustion that was harrowing just to witness. Gabriel glanced back at the worry-lined face of Soren, who nodded at him, before turning his gaze to the other child, unable to hold back a small smile as he glimpsed the tattered handmade teddy bear tucked under their thin arm.

The redhead stiffened as Gabriel reached towards the kid, but relaxed somewhat when he carefully scooped them into his arms, although her eyes still tracked his movements closely. He rose to his feet and she slowly, hesitantly, imitated the movement, one of her hands clutching the child's own hand so tightly that her knuckles were turning whitish.

Afraid that they could be torn away from her too.

Gabriel swallowed down the sudden knot in his throat and escorted their silent group out of the cave. Several of their companions paused in their activity to stare openly at the little girl, who refused to meet any of their eyes or loosen their hold on the smaller kid's hand, and the child in Gabriel's arms, whose mouth quivered in their sleep as though they were caught in the midst of a terrible dream.

The warrior's grip on the kid tightened instinctively, but fortunately Soren began to walk a little ahead of him and the children, directing warning glares to the other men until they looked away shamefacedly.

Gabriel exhaled thankfully. These kids had been through more than enough already.

*

Petra and Jesse. That was what their names were. At least, that was what the girl calling herself Petra mumbled out as she stared down into a mug of untouched, rapidly cooling hot chocolate. Her tense shoulders were enveloped in one of the thickest blankets the Order had been able to find.

A second blanket had, of course, been tucked around Jesse, awake now but yet to utter a single word, move an inch from where they were nestled closely against Petra's side, relax the death grip they had on their mud-spattered teddy bear or even raise their eyes from the floor.

Gabriel (having already asked the others to give him and the two kids some privacy) allowed the silence to drag on, trying to put off the inevitable question for as long as he could so as to give them the chance to explain on their own terms. But as the minutes crept by as quietly as if out of some sort of respect, as if they were afraid of disturbing the children with their passing, the warrior had to ask.

"What happened, Petra?"

"I don't know," she muttered.

"Petra-"

"I don't _know_ ," she repeated, raising her head at last, her expression now one of an almost unnerving blankness, voice utterly flat. "All I know is that...that _people_ came...and one of the women pushed me and Jesse into the cave and told us to take care of each other and not to come out until one of them came back to get us." Her fingers tightened around the now-cold mug in her hands. "Only nobody did."

Gabriel cursed himself internally, wishing he had the first idea what to say to console her. But then, words would mean very little to Petra at that moment. It was probably better to just stay silent and give her and Jesse time, especially considering that Jesse in particular looked like they were struggling to process what had happened, struggling to make any sense of it.

But his blasted traitorous mouth refused to support this decision. "And...your parents? Where are they?"

Petra's mouth quirked into a hollow smile. "Where are anyone's parents?" she countered. "What mattered was being a part of _that_ group. Only family either of us needed." She tilted her head down towards Jesse, who was now watching Gabriel through big, slightly fearful eyes, to include them in the statement.

Before Gabriel could assure the kid for the fifth or sixth time that nobody in the temple had any intent on harming either of them, Ellegaard poked her head around the door, looking uncharacteristically uncertain. Olivia appeared at the engineer's side, offering Petra and Jesse a nervous smile that was met with either a wide-eyed stare (from Jesse) or a stony look (from Petra).

"Sorry to interrupt," Ellegaard said, brown eyes darting from Gabriel to the children. "I just thought that...well, those two...I mean, you two...you look like you could use some cleaning up and a change of clothes. And then a good hot meal."

Gabriel mentally berated himself again for not thinking of that sooner.

Petra and Jesse exchanged inscrutable looks. Petra opened her mouth, that suspicion resurfacing in her eyes, but Jesse was already darting across the room, taking the hand that Olivia held out to them, their teddy bear dangling by its paw from the other.

"The bear might appreciate a good scrubbing too," Gabriel found himself pointing out, giving Jesse a slight smile that the kid, surprisingly, returned.

Meanwhile, Petra had gotten to her feet too, evidently having decided that Jesse wasn't going anywhere with two near-strangers without her. The door swung shut behind the four of them, leaving Gabriel to lean back tiredly in his chair, staring up at the ceiling without really seeing it.

*

Fortunately for Gabriel, he knew how best to vent his feelings. Training had always served him very well indeed in that respect, letting everything else fade away until all he was focused on were his blade and whatever was in front of him.

That still wasn't quite enough to block out the sound of the training room door being opened.

Gabriel halted mid-swing, turning a somewhat startled gaze onto none other than Petra, who was hovering in the doorway. It was as though the beaten-up, paranoid girl Gabriel had met in the cave had been replaced by a hesitant child, hair neatly combed and wearing what Gabriel vaguely recognised as something belonging to Olivia, a little short on Petra but at least clean and dry.

"Do you need anything, Petra?" the warrior asked cautiously.

Petra shrugged, moving into the room. "Not really. I just wondered where you-" She cut herself off, trying very hard to steamroll any expression out of her face. "Jesse's getting patched up and I made your friend swear to me that they'll be okay, so can I just stay here for a while?" she asked directly, an odd look in her eyes that said _'I feel safer here'_.

Gabriel nodded, giving her a smile that was gentler than his usual ones. "Certainly."

Petra nodded slightly, seating herself atop a double chest as Gabriel returned to his training. Which was suddenly more difficult to concentrate on when one could feel a child watching them closely.

"Do you like swords?" Gabriel asked Petra over his shoulder, regretting the tactless enquiry a moment later. To his relief, Petra nodded slowly.

_Progress._

"How about I teach you a few things sometime?" he persevered.

She shrugged, hands busy whittling a piece of wood into sticks in a way that Gabriel would have said was nervous if it had been anyone else doing it. The warrior left her to it, slashing away with his sword like there was no tomorrow, until the sound of someone clearing their throat had him stopping in his tracks for the second time.

Petra was standing there, the lid of the chest she'd been sitting on propped open, one of Gabriel's spare swords in her hand and the tiniest hint of a challenging smile on her lips.

If that didn't signify a leap forward, Gabriel didn't know what did.

*

Of course, the course of accidental adoption that everyone involved would deny was adoption never did run smooth. There was just one little, tiny, insignificant, rather massive thing they were all forgetting.

Ellegaard and Soren had finally been persuaded to relax (and Magnus to ease off on the pyrotechnic experiments) for an evening and so nine people were currently gathered in the temple's main living room. Jesse (who'd come out of their shell a lot more thanks to the kids' combined efforts) was chattering away about animals to Axel and Olivia, Lukas was examining a new type of block Soren had shown him and making notes on the most effective ways to utilise it in a build and Petra sat at Gabriel's feet, sharpening her new sword just the way he'd taught her and coming out with a well-timed quip every once in a while. Naturally, being told it was time for them to go to bed elicited a round of groans from them, which in turn had them treated to four stern glares.

Jesse giggled in spite of themselves and graciously admitted defeat by leading their new friends out of the room. And that was when the Order remembered just what they'd neglected to do.

There was a slight gasp of surprise from at least two of the kids, then a stream of chirpy-but-slightly-nervous apologies, as though…as though they'd just collided with someone. And a muffled crash rang out from somewhere in the entryway, suspiciously similar to the sound you'd get from dropping, oh, perhaps a bag full of crystal vials. Onto, say, a stone floor.

The four Order members automatically exchanged wide-eyed looks, _'didn't any of you tell him?'_ written all over each of their faces. Hasty recollection quickly turned to mixed apprehension and amusement as they realised _'no…no, we didn't'_.

Almost on cue, a familiar voice issued forth, almost endearing in its combination of poor volume control and sheer 'why me?' tone that permeated the words.

" _WHERE_ did all these _SMALL PEOPLE_ come from?!"

A second. Two seconds. Three–

"LAST ONE TO THE ROOF HAS TO EXPLAIN THIS TO IVOR!" With that, Magnus all but stage-dived out of the room, a sniggering Axel at his heels.


End file.
